Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Small Business Success Strategies - Lessons From the Olympic Games For Growing Your Small Business

Are you in awe when you watch the Olympic Games? Isn't it amazing to see the absolute mastery and control of the athletes, whether it's in ski jumping or bob sledding or ice skating. Read on for important lessons we can learn from these athletes to grow our business.

Of course, comparing yourselves to an Olympic athlete can be intimidating. Just remember, you won't be competing with them on their turf. You've got your own.

So what small business success strategies can you learn from them that would help you with growing your business and getting more customers? A lot.

1. Olympic athletes focus on their strengths

Every athlete has a specific sport - ice skaters never compete in bob sledding or skiing. They all specialize, and not just in an arbitrary way, but they play to their strengths. They have figured out exactly where their passions and their aptitudes intersect, and have put in enormous work towards building their skills in that exact area.

And so should you. Focus on what you enjoy and do best, and do more of it. In fact, focus your entire business on your passion and strengths. This is where the importance of having a narrowly define niche comes into play. Succeeding as a generalist is tougher than being an expert in one area. And being the best is not as hard as it may seem if you focus to be the best at ONE thing.

2. Olympic athletes know that it doesn't take a huge increase in performance to outperform the competition

Think about it. How much better is the athlete who comes in first in comparison to the second or even the tenth? It's really an incredibly tiny difference, right? For example in the women's downhill skiing event, gold medalist Lindsey Vonn was just.056 seconds ahead of silver medalist Julia Mancuso. And in the men's downhill event, only 0.09 seconds separated first and third place!

How can you put that to work for yourself?

So often we think that we have to be incredible so we hold back from doing something. For example: launching a new program or service, making a difficult outbound call, writing an article or giving a speech - any of these on your to do list?

Yes, we should always strive to be our best but not at the exclusion of actually doing it. Letting go of perfectionism and focusing on doing the best we can (while striving to get better) is one of the most important small business success strategies we can learn from Olympic athletes.

By : Sue_Clement

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